Slightly delayed - yes, I know; this was something I was going
to discuss weeks ago but between Windows 8 and a few other things, it got put
off a bit. Sorry about that. Anyway ...

First off, I have to admit that I'm using my tablet in a
slightly "hands-off" mode on my corporate network. If it were up to me,
I'd join it to the domain and really go to town, but that's not permitted.
I work in the health care industry and we have to abide by the HIPAA (Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) - it's the "Accountability" that
causes issues for us since this law and the follow-on HITECH (Health Information
Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act require that we go to
extraordinary lengths to keep medical and financial information on our network
sacrosanct. Not that I disagree with that - since I'm a customer of my own
facility my information is in there too - but sometimes it forces us to use
less-direct but more-secure means of interfacing with the corporate network.
For example, non-corporate computers may only access the corporate network
through a VPN abstraction layer that isolates the corporate network from the
accessing device. So with that proviso in mind ...

Of late, we have started a major project which will upgrade
one of our divisions to a newer, more modern computer system. This will
involve the receipt of a large number of computers, monitors, laptops, printers,
terminal devices and other associated hardware. We need to be able to
track each item from time of receipt to delivery to the customer, including
being able to assign various attributes (IP addresses, location names, print
queue names, and so on) as each piece of software moves through the stages from
receipt to delivery. For this purpose the tablet has been an invaluable
tool - I take it with me and as the equipment is unloaded from the shipping
pallets I put identification stickers on each piece of equipment and enter that
data into a spreadsheet. Then as we configure and customize each piece of
equipment its status can be quickly updated in the appropriate page of the
spreadsheet, until it's delivered and that is noted in the tracking spreadsheet.

I have also been using my tablet for a lot of note-taking.
As I go to various areas and work on this project, I sometimes note something
that isn't done or not done correctly. A quick hand-written note in the
Tablet app, later converted to text and pulled into OneNote, lets me communicate
this information to my boss and others working on the project so that the issue
can be corrected appropriately and feedback routed back to me. I can also
take notes from other meetings and file them either in OneNote, or in another
form in my personal file archives.

One of the major advantages to the Windows 7 tablet is that it
is able to work natively with Microsoft Office documents. Since this is
our corporate standard software I reliably need to be able to both create and
revise documents that will pass through others' computers and be further
processed and refined before being finalized and sent on to their eventual
destination. Non-Windows tablets can often view or edit such documents in
a limited fashion but that's not good enough for me. I need to be fully
compatible with my co-workers and that requires native Office support.
With Windows 7 that's assured for me.

The tablet also works very well as a sharing and visualization
tool during meetings. I can load a Visio diagram, or a graphic or
photograph, pass it around the meeting, and everyone present can see what I see
and if necessary, annotate or modify the presentation. I can then save the
modified diagram or drawing as part of the meeting minutes or send it to
everyone present as a further discussion and analysis tool.

Finally, on a slightly more personal note, there are the
occasional times where there's some 'dowtnime' - waiting for a process to
complete, or a program to finish a test run, or a few minutes between meetings
or activities. Having some music handy to pass the time is always a
welcome diversion, and there's even the possibility of loading some video
(work-related, of course; educational materials and such!) that is available for
viewing and reviewing when a bit of time presents itself.

Windows 8 Preview Available! [Part 2 - Hands-On]

Well, it's been about ten days since I started working with
Windows 8 on my Acer tablet - I can only say that I'm even more impressed with
Windows 8 now than I was when I first started using it. In short, the
Metro interface is both easy to use and powerful, and the underlying Windows
7-style desktop allows Windows 8 to remain compatible with the non-Metro
software that everyone will be using and that will still be the most widely
available choice at launch time.

The experience isn't quite as compelling on a laptop or
netbook - I've installed it on both. Oh, it works okay but there are some
enhancements that aren't working now that I expect will be as we get further
along in the development cycle - for example, both my netbook and notebook have
mouse touch-pads that can simulate touch surfaces in Windows 7 (both support
dual-touch gestures, panning and zooming, and so on) but neither one is
functional in the Developer's Preview of Windows 8. No fault being found
here - there are likely driver issues involved that will be resolved long before
the release date.

But on a tablet - Windows 8 really shines. Some of my
favorite discoveries:

Gestures are more prevalent than in Windows 7. For
example to replace right-click and context-sensitive operations, you put
your finger at the bottom of the screen and "swipe up" to activate the Metro
application (or Start desktop) menus. Switching between programs or
contexts is as easy as putting your finger at the left side of the screen
and "swiping in" to switch to the next application.

The Internet Explore 10 "touch version" is quite polished
- now you can actually get to the point where there is nothing showing
except the web page you are looking at. No menus, no buttons, no
address bar - just you and your content.

Although some have complained about the transition from
Metro to the Windows 7-style desktop, I don't find it to be that much of a
bother. The switch between contexts is clean and fast, and you can
switch from the desktop presentation to the Metro presentation with little
fuss at all. It's certainly no more jarring than switching from one
full-screen program to another or hitting the "Show Desktop" button/icon in
the current Windows versions.

A welcome and quite useful feature is the ability for the
OS to mount ISO images and present them as if they were an inserted CD/DVD
disc. For tablet users this will be invaluable, you no longer need to
go hunt up a USB CD/DVD drive to install software.

I'm not going to get too much into the UI itself nor loads of
screenshots for two reasons - first, there are many web sites out there doing
that kind of coverage; and second, since this is a Developer Preview the odds
that many visual effects, graphics, included applications, and so on will be
greatly modified before launch time. Plenty of time in the beta for that
kind of thing. :-)

Some things I've found that do bug me a little bit:

The dual-face nature of the Developer Preview means that
there are some areas where things do "bump" at the transition stage.
For example, there is a Task Manager in the desktop that is a mirror of the
Windows XP/Vista/7 Task Manager, but an entirely different one if you start
Task Manager from the Metro interface. And oh yes, by the way, the
Metro Task Manger sees both desktop and Metro processes and programs but the
desktop Task Manager doesn't see Metro processes and programs.

Similarly, there are some Control Panel applets that do
the same. For example, I am a firm believer in setting Windows Updates
to "Download updates but let me decide when to install them" - because some
of my computers are busy 24/7 and I want to decide when to reboot them.
Windows 8 does warn you when updates are ready to be installed but you have
to go through the Metro Control Panel to get to the Desktop to get to the
old-style Microsoft Updates dialog where updates can be installed.

Rearranging tiles on the Start screen seems to follow some
arcane and hidden rules I haven't figured out yet as I sometimes wind up
with gaps or cannot move a tile to the place I want it to go.

The Metro (touch) version of Internet Explorer does
not support plug-ins, and won't. This is a decision
Microsoft has made - they wish folks who want extensibility to the browser
to use the HTML5 features that IE10 will support. I think I disagree
with this decision or at least think it should be a user choice - but I see
where they are coming from with the decision and though I don't think I
agree with it I understand why the choice was made. Plug-ins
do work fine in the Desktop version of Internet Explorer.

None of these are major problems and in fact I assume they'll
almost surely be fixed (or properly documented at least!) when the beta and
release stages come around.